Journalist, social reformer and political activist. Jessie Lloyd O'Connor worked as reporter for Federated Press. Her extensive writings, notes, and correspondence document the labor strikes she covered in Kentucky and North Carolina and her work on civil rights, civil liberties and women's rights. O'Connor served and supported numerous progressive organizations, including the American League Against War and Fascism and the ACLU. Other materials include family biographical files; memorabilia; and photographs. Notable correspondents include family members William Bross Lloyd, Lola Maverick Lloyd, and Harvey O'Connor; as well as friends and colleagues such as Mary Heaton Vorse, Josephine Herbst, Earl Browder, Ella Reeve Bloor, Florence Luscomb, Katherine Anne Porter, Rosika Schwimmer, and Pete Seeger.

Terms of Access and Use:

Restrictions on access:

The papers are open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection with the exception of three folders of correspondence related to Kathleen O'Connor, which are closed until her death.

Restrictions on use:

The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to the papers of Jessie Lloyd O'Connor. Copyright to materials created by others may be owned by those individuals or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Permission must be obtained from the Sophia Smith Collection to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use."

Sophia Smith CollectionSmith CollegeNorthampton, MA

Biographical Note

Jessie Lloyd O'Connor piloting Volya, undated

Jessie Lloyd, journalist and social activist, was born in Winnetka, Illinois on February 14, 1904, the daughter of William Bross Lloyd, writer and socialist, and Lola Maverick, pacifist and founder of the U.S. section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). O'Connor's grandfather was Henry Demarest Lloyd, muckraking journalist and author of Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894), an expose of Standard Oil. Her family's strong tradition of democratic socialism provided the foundation of a political education that was augmented by a constant stream of visiting radicals and reformers, including Jane Addams, Rosika Schwimmer, and John Reed. In 1915 Lloyd accompanied her mother to Europe aboard Henry Ford's Peace Ship.

After earning an A.B. in economics from Smith College in 1925, Lloyd visited London where she witnessed a confrontation between police and strikers during the British General Strike. Inaccurate news reports of the incident confirmed her parents' contention that mainstream press accounts of the poor were untrustworthy. A short stint working in a Paris factory reinforced her desire to provide a corrective to slanted news coverage by reporting events herself.

Lloyd contributed stories to newspapers in the United States while working as a correspondent for the London Daily Herald in Geneva (1926) and Moscow (1926-28). From Moscow, she also sent stories to the Federated Press, a labor wire service in the United States.

From 1929 to 1935 Lloyd worked as a reporter for the Federated Press in the United States. She was sent to Gastonia, North Carolina in 1929 to cover the National Textile Workers Union's attempt to organize the Loray mill. She wrote a pamphlet on the strike, Gastonia: A Graphic Chapter in Southern Organization (1930).

Early in the Depression O'Connor wrote stories about the unemployed in New York City. Her exposure to the plight of the jobless under capitalism and the activities of the Communist Party on their behalf fostered an appreciation for Communists' courage and dedication. Over time she became disenchanted with the Party, finding it doctrinaire and fraught with internecine battles. Though she declined to join, O'Connor never became part of the anticommunist camp within the American left. In 1957 she wrote of her accord with communist aims of "world peace, race brotherhood, [and] equality for women" but added that she "could not favor dictatorship of the proletariat or trust anybody with power, without guarantees of civil liberties for opponents."

In 1930, Jessie Lloyd married Harvey O'Connor, an editor for the Federated Press, and a former logger, seaman, and member of the International Workers of the World. The O'Connors decided to open a bureau of the Federated Press in Pittsburgh where the labor movement, in attempting to organize the steel mills and mining companies, was fighting its most bitter struggle. First, they took a six month trip to the Caribbean and Mexico, filing
stories from each region they visited. The trip solidified a fruitful working relationship that would continue throughout the O'Connors' lives.

In 1931, the Federated Press sent Jessie Lloyd O'Connor to replace a correspondent who had been shot while covering the coal miners' strike in Harlan County, Kentucky. Despite regular threats, she turned interviews with miners, their families, and members of the community into evocative stories carried in newspapers throughout the country. Her investigation of the murder of two men conducting a soup kitchen for the strikers left an indelible impression which she described in the O'Connors' 1987 memoir: "Class struggle is not something I want to preach, it is something that happens to people who try to resist or improve intolerable conditions."

After returning to Pittsburgh, O'Connor continued working for the Federated Press and helped revitalize the local ACLU. She also helped research and edit the first in a series of Harvey's exposes of American capitalism, Mellon's Millions (1933), a role she played for his subsequent books.

The O'Connors went to Moscow in 1932 to work for the English language Moscow Daily News. Jessie was troubled by the changes in Russia since 1928 and unhappy translating dull stories of "socialist triumphs in new paper mills and state farms." When libel litigation over Mellon's Millions was resolved in 1933, the O'Connors returned to Pittsburgh where workers, guaranteed the right to organize by the National Recovery Act, were forming union locals throughout the steel industry. While reporting for the Federated Press from 1933 to 1935, O'Connor carried messages between organizers. During the Ambridge strike she narrowly escaped arrest, and smuggled the main organizer out of town. During this period she also chaired the Pittsburgh chapter of the League Against War and Fascism.

An heir to the Chicago Tribune fortune, O'Connor believed it was her duty to use her money to benefit radical causes. In 1934, she received publicity for demanding at a stockholders' meeting that U.S. Steel recognize a union of its employees. She helped fund many projects, from literacy and voting campaigns in the South to radical bookstores.

Although she continued to work periodically as a freelance journalist, in 1936 O'Connor turned her energies to volunteer work and later, caring for two children the O'Connors adopted in the early 1940s. From 1939 to 1944 they lived at Hull House. While in Chicago, Jessie was general secretary of The League of Women Shoppers, working to organize buying power to improve workplace conditions and wages. For the Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council she made a film of housing conditions designed to convince her former Winnetka neighbors to finance improvements. She also worked for the Industrial Board of the YWCA, the ACLU, Spanish Refugee Relief, the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign
Born, WILPF, and the Campaign for World Government. O'Connor claimed she served on so many boards during this period that she did justice to none of them.

In 1945 the O'Connors moved to Fort Worth, Texas where Harvey worked as publicity director for the Oil Workers International Union. In 1948 they settled in Little Compton, Rhode Island, where Harvey devoted himself to writing. Jessie was a member of the National Committee of the Progressive Party from 1949 to 1952 and a delegate to the People's World Constitutional Convention in 1950. During the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy accused both O'Connors of being Communists. Harvey was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and Jessie's passport was revoked. They joined with other activists to organize the National Committee to Abolish HUAC (later the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation). From the 1960s on, Jessie demonstrated against the Vietnam War, was active in political campaigns, worked against construction of a local nuclear power plant, and traveled extensively.

For forty years, peace activists, union organizers, victims of McCarthy era purges, novelists, and folk singers came to rest and recuperate at the O'Connor home in Little Compton. Beth Taylor, a friend who knew them in their last years described them as "joyful, witty, accepting people" and noted that "anyone who came under their wing...felt their magnetism." Harvey died in 1987. Jessie died December 24, 1988 in Fall River, Massachusetts at the age of 84.

While Jessie's career received less public notice than Harvey's, she holds a significant place in the history of American radicalism. Beyond her career in labor journalism, she was part of an extensive network of radicals involved in every major social movement of the twentieth century. O'Connor's multiple interests and commitments probably diluted her impact in any single area, but her unwavering dedication to social justice was an example for all who shared her commitment.

Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Jessie Lloyd O'Connor Papers consist of 61.75 linear feet and date from 1850s to 1988. The bulk of the papers date from the 1920s, O'Connor's college years, to 1988 and relate to every aspect of her life, both personal and professional. Types of material include personal and business correspondence; writings; speeches; personal records and memorabilia; printed material; financial and legal records; photographs; biographical material; organization and subject files; miscellaneous notes and lists, and several audiotapes of interviews and music.

While the bulk of these papers are directly related to Jessie Lloyd O'Connor and the causes she worked for and supported, because she was a collector, these are also family papers. Harvey O'Connor is especially well represented here because he and Jessie often collaborated on projects, notably their memoirs, but also their work for the Federated Press and Harvey's books. O'Connor's interest in her family's history is reflected in biographical material about, and writings of, notable relatives such as Henry Demarest Lloyd, Maury Maverick, and Lola Maverick Lloyd in SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL and SERIES III. WRITINGS, respectively. There is biographical material about friends and associates in SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES.

O'Connor's interests were many, her correspondence prodigious, and she was a natural collector. The result is documentation of a wide array of subjects within these papers, some in great depth, others in a more fragmentary fashion. Some of the major subjects addressed throughout the papers are labor; international cooperation and world government; peace and pacifism; civil liberties; communism and U.S. anti-communism; the cooperative movement and other consumer issues; the environment; music, especially of a political bent, and dance; philanthropy; Soviet Union; political prisoners and refugees; political campaigns, especially of the Progressive Party; and housing. O'Connor accumulated material related to organizations with which she was actively involved, such as the League of Women Shoppers, American League Against War and Fascism, Progressive Party, Hull House, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and United World Federalists, as well as those in which she retained a more peripheral interest, receiving mailings and making donations. Some of the organizations, like the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Woman's Party, are well known and extensively documented in other archival repositories; others are more obscure, and it is likely that material about them is more difficult to locate in other archives. In addition to large social, political, and economic topics covered within the collection, there is a great deal of material, especially in SERIES II. CORRESPONDENCE, that addresses more personal subjects, such as marriage, divorce, and family relationships in general; friendship; sexual mores; adoption; the women's college experience; professional collaboration between husband and wife and the ambivalent relationship of career and family in women's lives; and the role of wealthy contributors to radical causes and the contradictions they faced. Similar subject matter and types of material often appear in several of the different series or parts of series and "see also" references have been used liberally in an attempt to alert researchers to at least some of these connections, though they are far from comprehensive.

The papers are open to research according to the regulations of the Sophia Smith Collection with the exception of three folders of correspondence related to Kathleen O'Connor, which are closed until her death.

Restrictions on use:

The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to the papers of Jessie Lloyd O'Connor. Copyright to materials created by others may be owned by those individuals or their heirs or assigns. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Permission must be obtained from the Sophia Smith Collection to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use."

Preferred Citation

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Additional family papers are housed at the New York Public Library (Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection); Wayne State University and Brown University (Harvey O'Connor); and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Henry Demarest Lloyd). There is additional material about O'Connor in the Smith College Archives and the Dorothy Smith Dushkin Papers in the Sophia Smith Collection.

This series includes a wide variety of material that documents Jessie Lloyd O'Connor's personal history, as well as her professional accomplishments. There is also biographical information about members of her extended family. The bulk of the series covers the period from the 1920s to 1988 and includes articles, interviews, personal records, school papers and memorabilia, financial and legal documents, correspondence, memorabilia, and photographs. The subseries are Articles and interviews, Personal records, Education, Financial and legal materials, Homes and other real estate, Death, F.B.I. files, Memorabilia, Family, and Photographs. Education includes not only a record of O'Connor's studies from grade school and church school through Smith College, but a small amount of information about her extra-curricular activities, and a substantial amount of material relating to her Smith College alumnae activities. There is also alumnae business related correspondence scattered throughout SERIES II. CORRESPONDENCE--Friends and associates. Financial and legal material provides a thorough overview of O'Connor's involvement in Lloyd and Maverick family business interests, as well as information about her personal expenses, insurance, etc. The family correspondence related to business interests that appears here overlaps significantly with that included in the family correspondence in SERIES II, notably that of George "Brother" Green who was in charge of the George Maverick Trust, but also that of O'Connor's Lloyd relatives. Homes and real estate also contains some financial and legal material but also contains more general material, such as floor plans; correspondence with the overseer of William Bross Lloyd's Jamaican estate; and preservation of the Henry Demarest Lloyd homes in Winnetka, Illinois, and Sakonnet, Rhode Island. Family consists of articles, correspondence, memorabilia, and other biographical material O'Connor collected about various family members. Photographs includes not only family snapshots and albums, but two folders of photographs related to O'Connor's work as a journalist in the 1930s in North Carolina and Pittsburgh.

This series is organized into three subseries: Family, Friends and associates, and General/business.

Scope and content:

All of the subseries include both incoming and outgoing correspondence filed together chronologically and include items that were enclosed with correspondence: clippings, memorabilia, photographs, and third party correspondence. This is especially the case for the Family correspondence because many family members were inclined to exchange clippings and copies of correspondence received from a third family member. For this reason the researcher will find, for example, letters from Mary Lloyd included in letters between Jessie and her other siblings, Georgia Lloyd Berndt Beshears and William B. Lloyd, Jr. The family correspondence reveals a strong sense of a shared activist tradition among descendents of the likes of Henry Demarest Lloyd, Samuel Maverick, and Lola Maverick Lloyd. The letters reflect family members' keen consciousness that with wealth comes an obligation to society, not only for implementing progressive change, but also on the level of individual charity. There is also extensive personal material about relationships within the family, notably the protracted and difficult divorce of Lola Maverick Lloyd and William Bross Lloyd, Sr. and the adoption of Stephen and Kathleen O'Connor.

O'Connor was a prolific correspondent with Friends and associates as well as family members. She maintained relationships through the years with the famous and not so famous by corresponding often and at length. Some of her better known correspondents in this subseries include Emily Greene Balch, Ella Reeve Bloor, Jean and Leonard Boudin, Ann and Carl Braden, Emmett Pat Cush, Virginia Foster Durr, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carl and Lucy Haessler Josephine Herbst, Grace Hutchins, Hays Jones, Corliss and Helen Lamont, Florence Luscomb, Darwin Meserole, Malvina and Bud Reynolds, Katherine Anne Porter, Franciska and Rosika Schwimmer, Pete and Toshi Seeger, Art and Esther Shields, Ching-ling Soong, Anna Louise Strong, Alexandra Tolstoy, and Mary Heaton Vorse. Other well known correspondents appear in other series and many are indicated by "see" and "see also" references, for example David Dellinger's correspondence is located in SERIES IV. ORGANIZATION FILES--Liberation. Less well-known correspondents are illuminating on topics as wide and varied as O'Connor's interests. For example, Y. Veenis, a friend from the O'Connors' Pittsburgh days, wrote about changes that had occurred in conditions in the steel industry, and Jule Seibel sent updates on the financial condition of the Federated Press. Correspondence of Evelyn Platt Merlin, a young woman who O'Connor took under her wing, and Evelyn's grandmother, Florence Winterburne, provide one example of O'Connor's frequent financial contributions to individuals who asked for her help.

General/business includes a chronologically arranged section of miscellaneous correspondence on a wide array to topics, followed by an alphabetically arranged section of subjects and organizations for which there is a substantial amount of correspondence. Within the subjects, the large amount of correspondence with archives and libraries reflects O'Connor's interest in her family's history and the placement of various family papers. The process of adopting the two O'Connor children is well documented in the "Children" section. Three folders of correspondence in this section related to Kathleen O'Connor are restricted until her death. The Public correspondence provides an overview of O'Connor's political opinions over the years and includes letters to editors, legislators, and other public officials. If it was clear that a letter to the editor had been published it has been placed in SERIES III. WRITINGS.

The series is organized into nine subseries: Diaries, Correspondence (about writings), Articles and essays, Speeches, London Daily Herald, Federated Press, Memoirs, Notes and research material, and By other family. The Articles and essays subseries is organized alphabetically by title and when no title exists, by subject.

Scope and content:

Jessie Lloyd O'Connor wrote on many different topics, and her strong opinions and wide range of interests are evident in the writings series. Numerous writings on political themes can be found with the works with titles, as well as her "Story of the Ford Peace Ship," an account of the Lloyd family's trip to Europe on Henry Ford's peace mission during World War I. Among works filed by subject are the numerous writings generated by O'Connor's travels to Russia. They include a satirical unpublished novel entitled A Flapper Goes to Russia, articles published by the New York Times Magazine, and her work for the English-language Moscow Daily News. Correspondence, research material, and some financial and legal documents from Russia are also located in the writings series. O'Connor's musical compositions are filed in the subjects section of Articles and essays and include an audiotape recording of her singing her songs. The London Daily Herald subseries contains correspondence, articles, and printed material concerning her coverage of the 1927 League of Nations conference in Geneva.

The Federated Press subseries documents O'Connor's most famous assignment for the left-wing news organization, the replacement of a reporter who had been attacked by a sniper during the violent mine strikes in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1931. O'Connor remained after being threatened by local vigilantes, and her time in Harlan is well documented in the articles and research material collected here. There is also material from her other Federated Press assignments, including articles and a pamphlet from the violent Gastonia, North Carolina textile strike. Her coverage of various Pennsylvania news stories, especially Pittsburgh mine and steel mill strikes is also well documented. Memoirs consist of the correspondence, drafts, and published versions of Jessie and Harvey O'Connor's autobiographies: the self-published Contumacious Couple: Memoirs of Harvey and Jessie O'Connor, 1985, and a version of it edited by Susan Bowler, Harvey and Jessie: A Couple of Radicals (Temple University Press: Philadelphia), 1988.

Notes and research material is a large subseries consisting of the many notes Jessie wrote and compiled throughout her life. These contain her thoughts on many subjects, ranging from story ideas, names and phone numbers of those she sought to enlist in her causes, or commentary on contemporary events. Where possible the notes have been arranged by date or subject. The final writings subseries is material written by Other family members. Particularly interesting are the writings of her pacifist mother Lola Maverick Lloyd.

This series consists of files on organizations in which O'Connor was deeply involved, such as the League of Women Shoppers, as well as others with which she seems to have had a more passing connection, making donations and/or collecting mailings. The series includes correspondence, brochures and other printed material, newsletters, and notes. O'Connor worked in the leadership of a number of local organizations-the American League against War and Fascism in Pittsburgh; the Progressive Party, especially Henry Wallace's presidential campaign, and the CIO- Political Action Committee in Texas; and in Chicago for Hull House (where she was a resident in the early 1940s), The Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, among others. Files for these organizations document O'Connor's extensive volunteer work and more generally, organizations of the American Left, especially in the Cold War years. The papers also contain material from organizations with which she appears to have had no direct involvement. These have been saved to highlight the variety of her interests and to suggest the wide array of progressive and radical organizations that existed during the 1930s through the Cold War years, as well as those from the 1960s on which may be more familiar.

Related material:

Some of the more ephemeral organizational materials have been grouped with other material in the appropriate category in SERIES V. SUBJECT FILES.

The subject files contain a wide variety of printed material, as well as correspondence, notes, and some organizational materials. Broad subject areas that are also represented by material in the WRITINGS and ORGANIZATION FILES series, such as labor and peace, tend to contain miscellaneous printed material, often from organizations with which O'Connor seemed to have little or peripheral involvement. Other broad areas of interest,
such as Music and Children/youth document her deep interest in subjects near to her heart, respectively songwriting and folk dancing, and her two children. Files on admired friends and activists like Ella Reeve Bloor, Anne and Carl Braden, and Pete Seeger, also contain material of a more personal nature. Some of the documents filed here may have been research material for O'Connor's writings or potential writings that were not identified as such and thus may overlap with materials in the WRITINGS series.

The following terms represent persons, organizations, and topics documented in this collection. Use these headings to search for additional materials on this web site, in the Five College Library Catalog, or in other library catalogs and databases.